If you really miss the cool and funny gangster films
that Guy Ritchie used to make, and wish that Ritchie had kept making
them, well, this is the film for you. The Ritchie baton has been
passed effortlessly to director Matthew Vaughn, who is one of
Ritchie's best friends, was the best friend at Ritchie's wedding to
Madonna, and worked as a producer on Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels. L4YER CAKE has all the strengths of those two
earlier films, and also has some of the same problems (too many
characters, too many storylines to follow). It also has a very cool
star, Daniel Craig, who can best be described as Steve McQueen with
a different accent. It also has a wild and unexpected (although
appropriate) ending.

All in all, it is a
nifty and entertaining hipper-than-thou film, although I just can't,
for the life of me, see why some critics went ga-ga over it. If this
had come before Ritchie's movies, I might have been more impressed,
but the layer cake now seems to be a little stale. This time the
item in dispute is a collection of a million Ecstasy pills, as
opposed to some rare guns or some diamonds, but the general idea is
about the same as in the Ritchie films. Everyone wants the prize,
and our hero is caught in a situation where giving it or even
selling to one group of gangsters will make him an assassination
target for two or three other groups, so he has to pull off a
spectacular flim-flam to satisfy all interested parties.

American audiences avoided this in its brief
theatrical run in the States, and I would certainly not recommend
that average Americans try to watch this in a movie theater, because
it's virtually a foreign language film, and that makes the
convoluted plot just about impossible to follow. There are just too
many characters, too much going on, and too much jumping back and
forth in time and place. On the other hand, DVD is an excellent
medium to add some user-friendliness. I found two DVD features very
helpful. First of all, I watched it in English with English
subtitles, thus allowing me to understand all the heavy accents.
Then I pulled one more ace from the DVD sleeve. After I watched the
film, I went back and listened to the commentary over some particularly confusing scenes. Even after
doing this, I was still confused on some details! For example, near
the end of the film, one character apologizes to another, "sorry
about Lucky." That was obviously supposed to be an emotional moment,
but I was racking my brain trying to remember just who the hell
Lucky was. Of course, I could have gone back and figured it out, but
it just wasn't worth it.

I don't mean to
imply that this is a poor film. In fact, it is quite a good one in
many ways, and I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it far more if
it had departed from the Richie formula and had featured a tighter
plot, involving fewer characters and fewer competing parties.

DVD INFO

Two alternate endings

Many deleted scenes

Behind-the-scenes featurettes

Director and writer commentary

Q&A with the director and star Daniel Craig

NUDITY REPORT

Sienna Miller shows her breasts
from the side, her bum in skimpy underwear, and one nipple under
a mostly transparent bra.

"Kinky Kerry" does a few frames
of full frontal nudity.

The
Critics Vote ...

Super-panel consensus out of four stars: three
stars. James Berardinelli 3/4, Roger Ebert 3.5/4, BBC 3/5.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, it's
a C or a C+, a slick genre film which
seems like a retread (or to be kinder, a continuation of the
tradition) of Guy Ritchie's gangster films.